


The Hound's Centurion

by Sineala



Category: The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Collars, Comment Fic, Fluff, M/M, Puppy Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-18
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-16 04:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1332301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It is in my heart that it would be a great help to me, if I knew I could still be your hound."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hound's Centurion

**Author's Note:**

> Written as commentfic for Riventhorn for the Sutcliff Comment Fest; the request was for puppy play.

They had hid the Eagle in his uncle's house for good that very night. Marcus expected nothing more from the evening, for certainly there could be no more excitement left, and so he was caught unawares when there was a soft tap on the wall next to his bedroom door.

"Come."

Esca stood in the doorway, twisting something thin nervously between his hands. Finally he stepped forward and let the curtain fall shut behind him. "Marcus?"

"What is it?"

It came to him then that he had spoken perhaps too sharply to Esca, earlier, for indeed Esca stood before him, like a whipped cur -- so the phrase went -- but Marcus did not know what he could say to set matters right between them.

"Earlier," said Esca, licking his lips, his eyes darting back and forth like startled prey in the trap, "I said that leaving for the north, I felt like a hound slipping its leash."

He remembered; it had struck him as strange to say, for Esca had not run away from him then, as dogs do when they slip their leashes -- he had only run beside him. If Esca were indeed a hound, he was surely a hunting-hound. Marcus nodded, suddenly taken with the comparison. "Just as when I met you, you had said you were my hound." 

Esca smiled, a flash of white teeth. "Exactly so. It is in my heart that it would be a great help to me, if I knew I could still be your hound--"

Marcus frowned. It was still a strange metaphor, but certainly, as a sign of loyalty, he would accept whatever oath Esca believed he owed him, whatever vows they made among the tribes. "Of course."

He waited for Esca to declaim, to make a great noble speech about how the earth should swallow him if ever he broke faith, but Esca only thrust forth the mysterious object in his fist. Marcus held out his hands and caught it.

It was a collar.

Marcus was beginning to see that he had very much misunderstood Esca's intentions. 

The thing was a heavy leather strip, notched, with a buckle; it could have fit equally the neck of a large dog or a man, and Marcus did not know which; suddenly it seemed very important to him that he should know. The Centurion might have another hound, if he wished it; the Centurion would never have another slave as long as there was breath in him.

"Esca." His mouth was dry. "Is this--"

"Sa, sa, it is for a hound." Esca smiled faintly, and one hand reached up to the hollow of his throat, where there might once have been a collar-gall, when the slavers had taken him. "Slave-collars in these parts are iron, when they are needed. Hound-collars, always leather. On the whole, men are kinder to their hounds."

"I had thought," he said, when he could summon up words, "that you meant it only as a symbol. The hound. Not that you truly wished to be one."

Esca tilted his head curiously, pushing his hair back behind his cropped ear. "Can it not be both? We need not do this, Marcus, if you do not wish it."

He did not know how to play this game, but that did not mean they could not try it.

"I would do that which pleases you," Marcus offered, hesitantly, for he would do anything in his power to please his friend, "but you will have to tell me how it is properly done."

Esca's smile was wider now, but still a little closed-off; he held himself tightly. "I am not sure that there is anything proper about it; only that we do what we want."

The collar still dangled from Marcus' hands. "It is your collar, and your imagining," he said, gently. "Do you tell me what you want, Esca."

The look in Esca's eyes was fragile, like a bubble in blown glass. A touch might shatter it. "Only that you tell me I am yours," Esca whispered, his eyes downcast, as if having to utter this wish was a thing that shamed him. "You tell me that I am yours, and that I am good."

Marcus reached up and put his hand to Esca's face, to his clean-shaven jaw, feeling the life in him, feeling Esca's pulse beat beneath his fingertips. Esca shivered and said nothing.

"Kneel, then," said Marcus, very softly, "and I shall collar my hound."

Esca dropped to the floor, his legs folded under him.

Marcus had thought he might feel silly, but as the collar slipped into place he felt nothing of the sort: a great pride swelled in his breast, like the golden dazzling of the sun.

Esca looked up at him mutely, wide-eyed. Hounds, Marcus realized, did not speak.

"Stay," Marcus said, sudden, with a bracing little snap of command; it was as he might have given an order to Cub. "Sit there."

While Esca regarded him, motionless, still sitting, Marcus backed away across the bedroom until his legs hit the bed and he sat, hard.

"Come here," he called, stretching the words out. "Here, Esca." It was a dog-call. It could never have passed for anything else, and he only hoped his uncle did not overhear.

And Esca... crawled. He crawled on his hands and knees, like a beast. It was a thing Marcus would never have ordered of a man -- a man who was not pretending this, at least; it would have been demeaning beyond the telling of it. But with Esca, because he went willingly, it was dignified. He moved with his head up, his eyes bright. Every motion he made was eager, as if he were indeed a hound bent on obeying his master. There was a nobility in it, one Marcus had never expected to find.

Then Esca was at his feet.

Marcus smiled. "Good," he murmured, knowing that the words were inadequate. "Good, Esca. You have done so well." In the north, Esca had done well; he hoped Esca knew he meant that too.

Esca sat back on his heels and looked up at him, and the sudden hungry hope in his eyes was almost beyond bearing.

"You are mine," Marcus said, the kind of thing one tells one's favorite hound, and Esca leaned his head against Marcus' thigh. Marcus let his hand drop into Esca's hair, running his fingers through it, petting it. "You are my most beloved hound, Esca, the very best hound, and you will be with me always."

It seemed nearly too much to say, too full of his hopes for the future, but it was easier to say it knowing that Esca would only listen, with patience and love, like a hound, and would say nothing himself.

They sat there together for a long time, Marcus' voice whispering compliments, praise, promises; Marcus' hand idly gliding over Esca's head, his neck, his shoulders; until the dying oil lamps finally guttered down into nothing and there was only the dim light from the rest of the house filtering through the curtain.

Esca's hands went to his neck; he unfastened the collar.

"Was that well for you?" Esca's voice was sleepy, content, but there was a tiny wave of anxiety in it.

Marcus smiled. "I am the hound's Centurion."

In the darkness, Esca laughed. "Then perhaps tomorrow the Centurion will want a leash."


End file.
